Policing Reform – Today

 

Have you given a thought to what happens to people when the police arrest them during a protest?

Well, the British newspaper, the Guardian, did the research and discovered the following:

“At least 90 percent of charges against Black Lives Matter protesters in a dozen jurisdictions have been dropped, dismissed or not filed, according to an analysis by The Guardian. Such a high percentage suggests that the police may have been arresting people simply to suppress dissent.”

“In Houston and Los Angeles, The Guardian found, 93 percent of charges were either dropped or never filed; in some cities like Dallas and Philadelphia, that number rose to 95 percent of charges dropped or never prosecuted. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, 100 percent of 127 cases related to peaceful protesting were dropped.”

The conclusion?

“The extremely high percentage of protest-related charges ultimately being dropped or dismissed suggests that police may have been using arrests as a tactic to prove that the protests were unruly and unlawful.”

Despite this clear record of outrageous, authoritarian police abuse, Republican-dominated state legislators, such as Florida, “…are filing a stunning number of anti-protest laws. Some bills criminalize protesting in what appears to be a stark infringement of First Amendment rights to assembly and freedom of speech that the right wing pretends to revere. Others propose legal protection for people who run over protesters with their vehicles or shoot them.”

In fact, one current Trump-wannabe, Gov. Ronald DeSantis of Florida, crowed this as he signed Florida’s version of the First Amendment-burning travesty while wrapping an ultra-right Republican ribbon around a slew of other minority-suppressing dreams, including:

• Allowing people, “to sue local governments if their property is damaged, injuries or deaths that arise from a riot or unlawful assembly.”
• Bumping up, “many criminal penalties from misdemeanors to felonies, meaning that, in Florida, many who are convicted under the new law could lose their right to vote.”
• “Making it a first-degree misdemeanor for a group of three or more to try and change someone’s viewpoints by using violence or the threat of violence. The crime would be punishable by a sentence of up to one year.”
• The governor said the bill will also target calls to “defund the police,” which he said was an “insane theory.”
• “This bill actually prevents against local government from defunding law enforcement,” DeSantis said. “We will be able to stop it at the state level.”

Florida’s new law, and those other Republican-controlled states are adopting, are clear harbingers of future ultra-right authoritarian rule as well as high-protein food for those like-minded authoritarian police officers throughout the nation. You know them as those clad in military gear, driving blacked out SUVs, armed with the latest weapons and wearing badges. The same “law enforcement” people who are also most likely to shoot a black person for being black, as well as others, regardless of race, for not following their commands, especially if that person is also obviously not wealthy.

Can we please make USA policing reform happen today?

The Plan to End Police Misconduct -Thom Hartmann (w/ Ben Jealous) - 21 Apr 2021

Salvation Ticket

Ray Downing used the Shroud of Turin to create Jesus' image.

With all this Republican Party talk about their Anglo-Saxon heritage, keeping America “white”, the "America First" caucus, and working so hard on being a white nationalist, fundamentalist-Christian party, I hope someone reflects for a moment or two on this question:

Who is it who punched their salvation ticket for eternal life?

Why, it was Jesus. Was it not?

And was Jesus an Anglo-Saxon? Well, no.

He was a Mediterranean Jew. But he was the guy who died for us. (John 3:16)

Jordan Klepper Fingers The Pulse - Into The MAGAverse: Full Special | The Daily Show 
- 19 Apr 2021

Outraged Yet?

Caron Nazario, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, is pepper-sprayed by Windsor, Va., police officer Joe Gutierrez, during a traffic stop in December. Gutierrez threatened Lieutenant Nazario before dousing him with pepper spray and pushing him to the ground, according to body camera footage of the episode.

We passed outrage years ago. 

Honestly, it is time to create a federal standard test for the police class people.

We need to know before they become cops if they will behave ethically and follow the law when they put on a badge and strap on that sidearm. 

Do they like people or do they hate people?

Do they have serious psychological disqualifications?

Do they like inflicting pain on others?

Are they control freaks?

We need to know.

We must not continue to empower these predators, those who fail the test, with life-taking, abuse-inflicting freedom to roam our streets.

We need to know. 

Some federal authority must oversee, license, require continuing education and psychological testing for police officers throughout the U.S. That oversight must also include ICE, FBI, alcohol and drug enforcement, U.S. Marshalls, etc. – police officers at all levels of government - anyone authorized to wear a badge and carry a gun.

We must put a stop to police lawlessness and abuse today.

Daunte Wright’s Death & America’s Broken Policing System | The Daily Social Distancing Show

Forever Tigers Fan

 

.@AkilBaddoo ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

He homers on the first pitch of his MLB career. pic.twitter.com/JKI5goelHQ

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 4, 2021

I grew up in Ohio, but I guess I was always a Detroit Tigers fan at heart. 

Akil Baddoo cleared that up for me.

If Not Our Military... Who?

 

Photo credit: Tigerland, the movie about Ft. Polk.

Back in the 1970s, I never doubted the loyalty of the U.S. Army. I knew I could count on our troops because they shared a common desire: survive, go home, and live their lives. Everyone wanted the same thing. So, people worked together and supported each other. No one worried about whether fellow Americans, or our leaders, were working against our common welfare.

Today, things seem to have changed and that shared “common good” appears to be disappearing.

Who will pay the price of Mr. Trump’s insurrection, misinformation, “alternative facts”, and endless lying? What will the resurgence of white supremacy and white nationalism in our military cost you and me?

If not our military, who will defend our Constitution the next time the white terrorists are breaking down the doors, threatening to hang their political opponents?

“Nearly one in five people facing charges related to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol had some connection to the military, including at least two active-duty troops, prompting Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to order a 60-day stand-down across the services to address extremism.”

Our World Is Indeed Upside Down

 

Prof. Howard Zinn

"It takes a month in Georgia to register to vote, but you can buy a gun for a mass murder in 10 minutes." Thom Hartmann

Our world is indeed Upside Down. We need to right it.

The Problem is Still Civil Obedience

In 2012, Matt Damon helped pay tribute to the late historian and author Howard Zinn. This rendition of a speech Zinn gave in 1970 on civil disobedience is one of his most powerful performances to date. It is still true... The Problem is Still Civil Obedience.

Howard Zinn, Boston Common, 5 May 1971

“Back in the 60s and 70s Dr. Zinn was one of the few who understood... and he did his best to tell us... that what was happening to our black brothers and sisters would soon be happening to us, all of us, save the mega-super rich. Today we understand his message was a premonition about our times, too.”

Please go here for more about Prof. Zinn and https://www.howardzinn.org/.

About Insanity

 

Obviously, the Republican Party has “drunk the poison Kool-Aid” laced with treasonous Trumpism. In its death throes the party is foisting its “alternative facts” delusions on the rest of Americans.

Some of us refuse to drink the poison, including the NAACP. Thank God, or the space people, someone, anyone for maintaining their sanity in defense against Trump-induced insanity.

Here’s the story:

We're suing to hold Trump accountable for 'treasonous acts', NAACP chief says, Kenya Evelyn, The Guardian, 26 Feb 2021.

"Derrick Johnson accuses president of ‘operating under a white supremacist doctrine’ in suit filed using 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act"

"NAACP president Derrick Johnson in 2019. The NAACP is representing Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson in the suit but confirmed they expect more members to join."

“Civil rights group the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has argued thats its suing of Donald Trump using the Ku Klux Klan Act – a historic law enacted to combat white supremacy – is in order to hold the former president accountable to Black voters that his Republican administration sought to invalidate.”

“The lawsuit alleges Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani sought to undermine the will of American voters by orchestrating a “series of events that unfolded [with] the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol” on 6 January in events that shocked the world.”

“We could not stand by and not pursue a course of action to hold those accountable for their treasonous acts,” Derrick Johnson, president, told the Guardian in an interview, noting the act was designed for “the very incident the world witnessed on 6 January”.

“Opponents have argued the twice-impeached Trump and his associates are still subject to civil and criminal penalties, including the Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell,who blamed Trump for the insurrection in a speech on the Senate floor shortly after voting to acquit him at his impeachment trial.”

“Accusing 43 Republicans senators who acquitted Trump of putting “partisanship over the constitution”, Johnson notes that in the past some civil judgements have still bankrupted hate groups or forced them and enablers to shut down.”

“Passed in 1871, the KKK Act originally sought to prevent violence and intimidation that members of Congress were subjected to carrying out their constitutional duties throughout the south during the Reconstruction era.” -more-

Jimmy Buffett live 2010 - Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.avi - 1977